How Myanmar’s government is making Buddhist violence toward Muslims worse

MEIKHTILA, Myanmar — “For three days,” Khine recalls, “our town was hell.” As the 32-year-old waitress tells it, the nightmare began with masked men waving Buddhist banners. Then came vigilantes, with torches and blades, butchering families…

This post was republished using Repost. Please read it on Informed Comment directly: http://www.juancole.com/2014/05/government-buddhist-violence.html

One response

Once again it seems that religion aggravates volatile situations rather than causing them. And, once again, we see that Muslims can be the victims. In the 1970s, “Christian fundamentalism [was] partially to blame for fueling Muslim militancy. Lebanon’s Christians killed and pillaged in the name of the cross… Religious coexistence gave way to estrangement… Waving holy banners, neighbor railed against neighbor. People seized upon their communal identity in a desperate effort at self-preservation. The state of war pushed people into their sectarian bunkers and turned an open, tolerant society into a jungle.…Christian fundamentalism, which was xenophobic and supremacist, fed into parallel tendencies in the Muslim camp. More than a hundred thousand people perished in the Lebanese Civil War. A million people—a third of the country’s population—were displaced.”link to detailedpoliticalquizzes.wordpress.com